“Do you want to have sex with me?”
“Well. No. Yes, but no. If you get what I mean.”
It sounded like there was a radio playing quietly in her office. She was on her own.
She let out a deep sigh. “If I do this, Harry, you need to be clear that it isn’t for your sake. But I still can’t do a full DNA analysis for a while—there’s a long queue, and Kripos and Bratt’s team are breathing down my neck the whole time.”
“I know. But a partial profile that excludes matches against certain other profiles takes less time, doesn’t it?”
Harry heard Alexandra hesitate. “And who do you want to have excluded?”
“The owner of the sweater’s DNA. Mine. And Rakel’s.”
“Yours?”
“The owner of the sweater and I had a little boxing match. He had a nosebleed, my knuckles were bleeding, so it isn’t impossible that that’s where the blood on the sweater comes from.”
“OK. You and Rakel are in the DNA database, so you’re fine. But if I need to exclude a match with the sweater’s owner, I’ll need something I can get his DNA profile from.”
“I’ve thought about that. I’ve got a pair of bloodstained jeans in my laundry basket, and there’s too much blood for it all to have come from my knuckles, so some of that must be from his nose. Sounds like you’re still at work?”
“I am.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
—
Alexandra was waiting when Harry pulled up outside the entrance to the Rikshospital, freezing with her arms wrapped round her. She was wearing high-heeled shoes, tight trousers and a lot of make-up. Alone at work, but looking like she was going to a party. He’d never seen her any other way. Alexandra Sturdza said life was too short not to make yourself look as good as you could all the time.
Harry wound the window down. She bent over.
“Evening, mister.” She smiled. “Five hundred for a hand job, seven for—”
Harry shook his head and handed her two plastic bags: one containing Ringdal’s sweater, the other with his own jeans. “You know no one in Norway works at this time of the night?”
“Oh, is that why I’m alone here? You Norwegians truly have a lot to teach the rest of the world.”
“Working less?”
“Lowering the bar. Why go to the moon when you’ve got a cabin in the mountains?”
“Mm. I really appreciate this, Alexandra.”
“In that case, you ought to choose something from the price list,” she said without smiling. “Is it that Kaja who’s lured you away? I’ll kill her.”
“Her?” Harry leaned over and looked at her more closely. “I thought it was people like me you hated?”
“I hate you, but she’s the one I want to kill. If you get that?”
Harry nodded slowly. Killing. He was about to ask if that was a Romanian saying, something that sounded worse when it was translated into Norwegian, but decided against it.
Alexandra took a step back from the car and looked at him as the window slid silently closed.
Harry looked in the mirror as he drove off. She was still standing there, arms by her sides, under the light of the street lamp, getting smaller and smaller.
He called Kaja as he was passing under Ring 3 and told her about the sweater. And the scarf in the drawer. About Ringdal showing up, and his pistol. He asked her to check if he had a gun license, as soon as she could.
“One more thing—” Harry said.
